Episode #132: Firewalking, Overcoming Suicidal Thoughts, Annihilating Alcoholism & Making Flowers Live Longer Using Sprite, With Dave Albin, America's #1 Firewalk Instructor

INTRODUCTION: 

Dave is the #1 Firewalk Instructor in America.  

Firewalking is a 1,000 year old rite of passage ritual where you literally walk across hot burning coals.  

Having worked for Tony Robbins for 19+ years and starting Firewalk Productions in 2014 Dave has firewalked hundreds of thousands of people. He and Tony Robbins set a World Record in London in 2005 walking over 12,300 people. 

His success has a scary and violent past. On June 8th, 1988 he put a gun to his head to stop the excruciating pain from both drug and alcohol addiction. 

2023 marks 35 years of sobriety. 

Dave's clients include Google, NASA, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Heineken, RE Max, Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), Chick-fil-A, CRISP Video, Mystery Hill, Y.M.C.A., Replace Your University, Tony Robbins, T Harv Eker, NATE BAILEY, The 4-Seasons, The Omni Hotel, The Waldorf Astoria, Waikoloa Hotel, and MANY others.

INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):

·      Let’s Talk about Firewalking!!!!!

·      Surviving A Suicide Attempt

·      Living Through A Rough Upbringing 

·      Overcoming Alcoholism 

·      A Trick To Making Your Flowers Last Using Sprite

·      Making Peace With The Past

·      Living Without Regret

·      Tony Robbins Quotes!!!

CONNECT WITH DAVE ALBIN:

 Website: https://firewalkadventures.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firewalkadventures

IG: https://www.instagram.com/firebuilder2/?hl=en

YouTube: https://shorturl.at/almFW

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-albin/

CONNECT WITH DE’VANNON:

Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.com

Website: https://www.DownUnderApparel.com   

Spiritual Services: https://www.sexdrugsandjesus.com/magical-lessons/

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CashApp: $DeVannonSeraphino

Venmo: @DeVannonSeraphino 

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Transcript

Episode #132: Firewalking, Overcoming Suicidal Thoughts, Annihilating Alcoholism & Making Flowers Live Longer Using Sprite, With Dave Albin, America's #1 Firewalk Instructor

[00:00:00]

You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your life.

There is nothing off the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.

De'Vannon Seráphino: hello, all of my delicious, beautiful children out there, and welcome back to the Sex, Drugs, and Jesus podcast. My name is Devanon. My name is indeed Devanon, and I'm your host. I have with me The great, mighty, powerful, clear minded and strong thinking Dave Alvin. 

Dave Albin: Wow. You go, bro. That was cool. It's nice. It's nice to be here, man.

Dave Albin: Thanks for having me on your show. It's an honor. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Absolutely. [00:01:00] And before I get too into it, I want to thank everybody for supporting the show. Our website is sexdrugsandjesus. com. I also have downunderapparel. com, my retail line, and we're on YouTube, Sex, Drugs, and Jesus Podcast. Thank you for your donations on Patreon, Cash App, PayPal, and Venmo.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And so yeah, Dave Alvin, as y'all can see from his beautiful background there, Firewalk Adventures is the name of his organization. And he's going to tell you all about that. In just a second, I'm going to read y'all through, read through his bio for you all right now, though. So, Dave is the number one firewalk instructor in America.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Firewalking is a thousand year old rite of passage ritual where you literally walk across hot, burning coals. Having worked for Tony Robbins for over 19 years and starting firewalk productions in 2014, Dave has firewalked hundreds of thousands of people. I think somewhere in the half a million range. He and Tony Robbins set a world record in London in [00:02:00] 2005, walking over 12, 300 people, y'all.

De'Vannon Seráphino: His success has a scary and violent past. On June 8th, 1988, he put a gun to his head to stop the excruciating pain from both drug and alcohol addiction. 2023, this year right here, will mark 35 years of sobriety. Congratulations. Dave's clients have included the likes of Google, NASA, Notre Dame, to name a few.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Dave, welcome to the show. 

Dave Albin: Amen, thanks. That was a mouthful. Again, it's great to be here. It's always an honor. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Yeah, when you got the history, you know, you know, you got to talk about it. So, so y'all on this show, we're going to, Get into this far walking and you know, talk about some of the myths surrounding it and all the good and the bad and everything in between.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So let me see. I love it. I love it. [00:03:00] I love it. So much content here. Talk to me about. This suicide attempt. In researching you, I saw that like you started drinking at 11, I think your parents may have been into alcohol. How did, how did you go, go from that to wanting to kill yourself? 

Dave Albin: It started a little earlier.

Dave Albin: I. You know, when I was around well, when I two months before I was born, my biological father he had hurt himself in the Korean war. He was a pilot. We don't know exactly what happened, but they put a plate in his head to save his life. Well, the man in it also took his life. And the reason behind that is because he was in so much pain on a regular basis.

Dave Albin: He used to say stuff to my mom all the time. He didn't know how much longer he could take it. So sure enough, two months before I'm born, he turns to mom and said, Hey, I'm going to the grocery store. Never saw her from him again. So we don't know a hundred percent what happened, but because he did talk about taking his own life, my mom just made the assumption that that's [00:04:00]what he did.

Dave Albin: So when I was born, I was born to a single mother. She already had two boys from a different, different man. She was living with my grandmother. And another cousin and myself, when I was born, six of us living in a one bedroom apartment, mom worked at the Roosevelt hotel. She was a server and she worked her ass off, but just like all the moms and the dads back from my parents era, they were, I believe the most amazing history of people that's ever walked the planet.

Dave Albin: And I say that because they saved the world, my mom and dad and my, all my friends, moms and dads saved the world. Literally. Right, because while my dad adopted me was over in Europe fighting the Nazis, my best friend's dad, who lived five doors down, his dad was in the Navy fighting the Japanese in Pearl Harbor.

Dave Albin: Right? So when all the men went off to war, guess [00:05:00] what? Guess what the women did? Everything. Right? They did everything. Bro, they built jeeps. They built tanks. They, my mother was known as Rosie the Riveter. She worked for McDonnell Douglas. She built airplanes. She drove rivets into, into the wings. That's literally what she did.

Dave Albin: So they knew hard work and they also knew stress, right? Because when you're in a war, war like that fighting too, it's. times. That's for sure. A about. Our parents came o So back in those days, my eight kids, guess what th when they got up, they gre If something broke, they fixed it. You know, times were super, super hard, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all of it.

Dave Albin: So, you know, I, I give kudos to my, to my parents generation big time. And [00:06:00] so the bottom, so the bottom line was, man, you know, she, she was doing the best she could. Well, when I was, when I turned five, she knew she couldn't take care of me anymore. My mom, right. And she did her very loving thing. She went to her sister, the oldest of eight kids, and said, Will you adopt David?

Dave Albin: And Bob and Pat Albin, my aunt and uncle, by birthright, said, yes, we will. And they did. So I moved from Hollywood to Long Beach, in a really nice part of town, close to Seal Beach. You could ride your bike to the beach. I mean, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. I'm Five, we went camping. We went over Bob who, you know, now's my dad, right?

Dave Albin: He was a highly decorated officer in World War II. He had career military army career military, also the national guard. And he was a very, very respected man in terms of what he did. He was [00:07:00] an area maintenance office officer for, so for as an example, when a truck or something would break down in Vietnam, it was my dad's job to get it back to the U S and get it fixed.

Dave Albin: That was basically his job. So anyway you know, my life was glorious. And then on the first day of summer, 1964. This is the very first day of summer. My mom, I'm in the TV room. She goes, David, come into the kitchen. We need to speak with you. And I come in and here's what I'm thinking is going to happen.

Dave Albin: They're going to tell me we're going camping because we did that a lot. We went camping all over California, literally Yosemite, Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead, Lake Havasu. So we went everywhere. So I'm thinking mom's just. It's gonna tell me where we're going camping, right? I don't know what's going on. And she sets me down at the kitchen table and my dad's here and my mom's here and she puts her hand on my hand and she said, David, what we need to tell you is we're not your parents.

Dave Albin: Oh, what? What do you mean? You're not my parents. Of course you're my parents. That's [00:08:00] like walking out saying outside seeing the sky's blue and go, yeah, that's the sky, but it's not blue. Well, it looks pretty blue to me and my parents looked like my parents to me. So that was a very interesting moment in my life.

Dave Albin: My life took a pretty interesting turn right there. Shortly after they told me this, Oh, by the way, let me back up left out of part, Dave. She said, Hey, by the way you know, your aunt Dean, yeah, well, she's actually your mother. She's actually your biological mother. And I was like, I didn't even really like her.

Dave Albin: And the reason I didn't like her is because every time she was around me, she wanted to be next to me. She would hold me. She wanted to put her arm around me. She wanted to touch me. You know, she wanted to kiss me, hug me. Well, duh, I was her son. Right. But I didn't know that. I just thought she was. overly affection or manic, if you will, and come to find out she was actually manic.[00:09:00]

Dave Albin: But it was nothing ever inappropriate. It was just, you know what I mean? It was just, she would want it to like, she was all over me, but I was her son, man. And I, you know, I understand that today. I love that. I respect that. And so that's how that kind of day went well. I don't know exactly the timeline, maybe a couple of weeks, maybe even it might have been a month or so.

Dave Albin: Mom and dad went to the grocery store and they left me home. They did that back in the sixties. You did that all the time, right? You'd leave your kid home. It was okay. You call the neighbor across the street and say, Hey, Joanne, Bob and I are going to the grocery store. David's at home. If he needs anything, can he just call you or come over?

Dave Albin: Yeah, sure. Of course. Tell him to come over. Tell him to come over now and we'll. Fix him a fried bologna sandwich, man. Am I a product of the sixties? So anyway they went to the store that day. Well, guess. And so I had watched these two beautiful people who were my mom and dad who are now not my mom and dad, right?

Dave Albin: All the confusion with that. And they started drinking. And when they started drinking, things got bad really fast. [00:10:00] Mom wasn't a mean drunk. Pat wasn't a mean drunk, but dad, Bob was, he was not a nice guy when he got alcohol into it. So I'd watch this transformation of these two people. And so they're drinking this stuff.

Dave Albin: I have no references for that. I don't know what it is. But when they left that day, I knew where it was. They were hiding it in plain sight. And I went over and I took it out of the cabinet and it was a, it was a half gallon of brandy. And the van and I, I took a coffee cup and I filled it halfway and I downed it and I drank it and I never had a chance.

Dave Albin: None, zero. I believe I was an alcoholic right on the spot. There was alcoholism in my family. It was already there. And so, and I was no exception to it because as a very young age, 11 years old, I'm drinking brandy and you know, it was like pouring rocket fuel into my body, if you can imagine, it just took over, it literally took over my [00:11:00] mind, my body, my physiology, all of it.

Dave Albin: And all I knew is that I wanted more. And so if that's alcoholic thinking, then I had it right on the spot, which I have learned today, it is alcoholic thinking. So, you know, life just kind of went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom around that. I didn't do well in school. I, I didn't play well with others.

Dave Albin: I had a lot of, you know, there was a lot of stuff going on that I was dealing with at the young age of that. So by the time I was a junior in high school, they, excuse me. Yeah. Junior. They pulled me into the principal's office and said, Alvin, you're out. You're done. We're, you're, we're expelling you from high school.

Dave Albin: Okay. I didn't mind. I didn't care. And here's why. There was nothing that they were teaching me at that moment in my life where I thought it would influence how I was going to make a living or whatever I wanted to do when I grow up. I had some really interesting beliefs about money at that point in [00:12:00] my life.

Dave Albin: And the reason I did is because I was already an entrepreneur. Now, in the midst of all this chaos that was going on in my home. There was also some really good stuff, right? My and like my mom had a big we had a pretty nice backyard It had a big l shaped planter and she grew flowers Beautiful gorgeous flowers.

Dave Albin: You name them. She grew it roses carnations. I mean all of them were back there And so what she would do is she would she would cut those flowers She would cut them at an angle at the bottom not at the bottom But at an angle and what that did it opened up or surface area. So when she put water on them, they drink more water.

Dave Albin: It was really interesting. And then she would take those and make beautiful bouquets for me to take out on the street and sell the flowers on the street corner. And so she would put them in a, in a, in a bucket, right? And then she would pour a little bit of seven up into the water. Well, guess what that does?

Dave Albin: It prolongs the life of the flower by almost. [00:13:00] 100%. So if they would normally last a week, they'll last two weeks. My the flowers that the people that drove by when I was a little boy selling them out on the street corner when they bought those flowers, they started noticing it right, right, right away. Why do your flowers out lost the florist two weeks opposed to a week?

Dave Albin: Try it, guys. Anybody listening to the podcast, go get you go get some flowers from the grocery store, cut them at an angle, arrange them, put your water in, and then put a little bit of clear seven up or sprite in the water and watch what happens. You want to impress your spouse, go do it. It's pretty, it's pretty awesome.

Dave Albin: I've been doing it for a long time and I learned that from my mom back in, you know, 1965, 64, whatever it was. Now that that's 

De'Vannon Seráphino: so, hold on, wait, That's an interesting one that I had not heard before, and I've been gardening for a long time before, but I'm certainly going to try it before, before we get on with the, with, with the rest of that leading up to the suicide attempt.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I want to go back and get [00:14:00] a little bit of clarity. When you said that your dad went to the store and didn't come back. Does that mean like there was no funeral? There was no body found. Like, you just know, 

Dave Albin: I know nothing. That's all I know. Yeah, great question. I, I don't know that I've ever been asked in that way.

Dave Albin: So thank you for asking that. No, I never really found out. No, I didn't find out anything. Number one, you know, was he remarried? Was he married before? Did he, did I have step kids, right? Or half brothers and sisters, I should say not step, but right. So I don't know that. In fact, part of the story is when my mother, when my biological mother passed away, I actually bought her from California.

Dave Albin: We had a farm in Virginia. My, you know, my wife and two kids had a beautiful farm in Virginia. And when mom got bad, we brought her, I brought her to the farm. Well, when we transferred all her stuff and after she passed, there was a book. And in that book, it was pilots in Korea. And when [00:15:00] I found the book, cause I'd never heard the story, nothing.

Dave Albin: I never got clarity about, you know, any of that. And I, but I had his name on my certificate of live birth, Jonathan Eisler. And so when I got, when I, when she passed and I found that book on the pilots, I thought, Oh my gosh, I'm going to get to see my dad for the first time. And we went through the book and didn't find it.

Dave Albin: My wife went through it. She's good at finding stuff. My wife at the time, my, my kid's mom, she did a, you know, she went after it because she wanted to know too, because that's her, that's her kid's grandfather, right? So we all wanted to know, we all wanted to see a picture of him and so on. I never, I never got that.

Dave Albin: I never, I never saw, I've never seen a picture of him. I don't know the backstory. I don't know about his life and I've, you know, that's been a rollercoaster. That I've rode for a long time. I did make peace with it. You know, I, I, I have no resentment toward my dad at all. I believe that he did the best he could.

Dave Albin: He apparently was in a lot [00:16:00] of pain and maybe he took his own life 'cause he couldn't take the pain. I don't know. All I know is he, he, he, he gave me life, which gave my kids' life, which now is given my grandkids life. So, to that and for that purpose alone I made peace with my dad a long time ago.

Dave Albin: There's a lot 

De'Vannon Seráphino: to be said there, and I'm sorry that you had to go through all that, but. The lesson, the lesson that, that, that, that the world can extract from that is learning to forgive people and letting it heal and fade with time, even though you never got that apology from them, you never got that explanation from them.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Right. Because what I see happen way too many times is people do things that hurt people and it's like. We can get into this state of being angry because they never explained it, or they never said they were sorry it by extension, giving that person who hurt you power over you. So, what, what you're talking about is like [00:17:00] detachment, you know, letting go and forgiving, which is very, very healing and powerful.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So, you know, I really, really encourage people to stop waiting for apologies that really aren't going to come, you know, an explanation. So some people are still alive and don't apologize to people. You see what I'm 

Dave Albin: saying? Oh, gosh, I know. Yeah, I, in fact, I. I I believe, well, you know, gosh, there's a ton there.

Dave Albin: To me, it's even deeper than that. The reason and, and, and because I made peace with my father and I love him and I appreciate him and I adore him, all those things. I'm not, I have no idea what he was going through, right? So I'm not, why even go down on that road with me? I'm not going to create some victim.

Dave Albin: Mentality because that's not going to serve the greater good. It's not going to serve me. And so I chose not to do it. In fact, you know, what's really cool about the reason because I did it that way. A couple of years ago, I'm out to dinner with my son, right? We're just out to dinner. And when we go out, I always like to take really good care of the server.

Dave Albin: Yeah, you know, I like to, [00:18:00] I like to have fun with them and be cheerful and kind and, you know, just really, really overwhelm them with love. Why? Because my mother was a server at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. She worked her butt off, right? So I got it. I understood that, you know, and, and servers in restaurants is Unfortunately, a lot of people go in there and they mistreat them.

Dave Albin: And that sucks. I hate that. I can't stand it when people do that. I've actually been out to dinner with somebody one time and I looked at him and said, if you ever do that again, we're done, I'll never go out to dinner with you again, ever. And so, you know, so anyway, the bottom line was, is I'm having a really good time with the server.

Dave Albin: And it's a seafood restaurant. It's here in Boone, North Carolina, not too far from where we live and I'm eating. Right. And all of a sudden I looked up and then I looked back at my son. And it dawns on me that I'm having dinner with my father's grandson and I can see my dad in my son's eyes. And I truly believe had I not made peace.

Dave Albin: With him a [00:19:00] long time ago, I would have never had that moment. And so that was like a moment for me that, you know, I don't know that I'm ever going to see a picture of my dad to this day, I don't, and I'm okay. If I don't, because again, I made peace with the man. In fact, the father that raised me is, I was talking about Bob and the alcoholism and what went on with that when he passed away after I had 10 years.

Dave Albin: This is my uncle, right? This is the man that's raising me, not my biological father who we're talking about. I went to his grave. He's buried at Arlington West. You have Arlington National Cemetery, right? In Arlington, Virginia. Well, you, there's no more room. So now they created a big cemetery in California, in Riverside.

Dave Albin: It is called Arlington West and I went to my dad's grave and, and I put my tenure chip, this is a chip I got from Alcoholics Anonymous. So I went and made peace with my dad too showing him my sobriety. Right. So it's just, you know, it really comes down to you create the story, right? [00:20:00]Everything that happens to us, we decide we're the ones that create that story.

Dave Albin: I'd highly encourage you to create an empowering one. Create one that's magnificent. You know, Viktor Frankl wrote the book, Man's Search for Meaning. And if you know anything about the book, I highly encourage it. It's not an easy read by any means. However, it's going to open you up to something that is beyond human, you know, capacity to understand how you could do that.

Dave Albin: He was in Auschwitz. Do you know the story? Do you know, have you read his book? 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Not that book. I know, I know about Auschwitz. 

Dave Albin: Right. Okay. Well, Inspector Franco wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, and he was an Auschwitz. They assassinated his family. They took everything from everything. You stand outside cold and naked.

Dave Albin: You may get fed that day. You may not. You may go to the chamber. You may not, but they take everything from you. But what Victor figured out was there's something you can't take from me. The Nazis could not take this away from him unless he gave it away, and he relinquished it. What's that? [00:21:00] His attitude.

Dave Albin: And so what did he do? He developed purpose. And the purpose was someone needs to get out of here and tell this story. And he did. And that's what kept him alive, his purpose. Same thing applies to our lives now, right? Why do people commit suicide? Because they've lost purpose. They're not directed. It's why we have a big problem in the country with veterans.

Dave Albin: And that's why I'm working on something here behind the scenes, that I think we could save thousands of veterans lives using the firewalk and the board break experience. So, we can talk about that down the road. Tell 

De'Vannon Seráphino: me about how, like, your suicide situation, How it went and how far walking with 

Dave Albin: yours.

Dave Albin: Sure. All right. So let me move it forward. Right. I'm a kid. I'm in high school. I get kicked out. I get a job. I get, I, you know, I start going through life. I've been married three times. I'm in my third marriage, right? So let's just move this, you know, to [00:22:00] 1988. I'm, I'm, I'm in my thirties and I wake up that morning.

Dave Albin: I'm married to a woman who has three kids or my stepkids and I'm living in the basement. They're upstairs. And I wake up that morning on June 8th, 1988, and I'm done. That's it. No more drugs, no more alcohol, no more pain, no more suffering, excruciatingly painful, physically and emotionally. And I said, that's it.

Dave Albin: I'm done. I'm out. I'm going to put a bullet in my head. And as I'm contemplating the suicide, I have three kids upstairs or my stepkids and I love them dearly. And I'm like, dude, yeah, you pull that trigger and maybe your worries are over, but you're going to kill those three kids. You can't do that. You better, you got to find another way, pal.

Dave Albin: I mean, I'm having this conflict with myself. It's internal. I'm in a lot of pain, tons of pain, but I want it to stop. And so I'm like, you know, you pull that trigger, you know, now the cops are coming and the morgues coming in, the paramedics are coming and [00:23:00] all the neighbors are going to know the school's going to know, again, my kids are going to suffer and so is my ex wife.

Dave Albin: She would have suffered. They would have suffered immensely. So the next thought I had was call Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, you know, what's interesting about that? I didn't know who AA was. I had no, I had no idea. I had no references. I didn't know anybody in AA. I'd never been to AA around it, nothing, but there's the thought.

Dave Albin: Where did it come from? You know, I get asked that, I don't know, but it was there. So call it divine. If you want, call it whatever you want. The thought came and I made the phone call and I got this beautiful human being on the phone. I affectionately nicknamed her match. And the reason I did is because she talked like this, right?

Dave Albin: She, she probably smoked two packs of non Paul Paul ball, non filters a day. Right? So she was obviously a heavy smoker. At least it sounded like, but man, was she awesome. And she was kicking my butt [00:24:00] because she was the gatekeeper, right? It's her job to make a decision about the person that she's talking to, whether she would call one of the guys in AA to come pick me up.

Dave Albin: And she did. So apparently I gave her enough information and I had a guy come pick me up. His name was Lauren, stayed with me all day. Took me to four meetings, a perfect stranger. He took me to a 1230, a 430, a 630, and an 830 meeting. And when I was at those meetings, it was an all men's group. One of them, I don't remember which one it was, but they gave me a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Dave Albin: And on the inside cover, they wrote, Before you take that first drink, call one of us. And they put their name and their phone number and sent me home with that. Well, the next day at about 8 o'clock in the morning, my phone rings. And it's John from AA. He's like, he's a real cheerful guy, right? He's really up, you know, been sober for many years.

Dave Albin: He's like, Hey, Dave, good morning. How are you feeling? And [00:25:00] I'm like, how do you think I'm feeling? Are you kidding me? I want to kill somebody. I'm out of my mind right now. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We hear you. Hey, listen, man. Here's what I'd like to do. You know, I know where you live. We talked last night. He said, you're right around the corner from me.

Dave Albin: Let me come pick you up. Let me take you to breakfast. Let's go to another AA meeting and you know, let's, let's, let's you and I get to know each other. Perfect stranger. And I'm threatening him and I'm real because I'm a very angry, dangerous person at that point. I'm homicidal. I'm suicidal. All of it. And here he comes, man.

Dave Albin: And he came and he picked me up. And that's how my career started with Alcoholics Anonymous. They just embraced me. They loved me until I could love myself. They knew, they knew how bad I was hurting. Hell, they had done it. They'd gone through it. They know, right? So there's congruency there. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: So when did the fire walk, did you use the fire walking at all to help you with the sobriety?

De'Vannon Seráphino: Were you already sober 

Dave Albin: by the time? No, I was sober. So how that came [00:26:00] to, where that, where that collided, right? When I was getting sober, I had insomnia. And so I was up late at night all the time. My sleep patterns were all over the place. And I was up late one night, early. Out of my sobriety and there he was I'm watching an infomercial.

Dave Albin: This is back in 1988, man. Mr. Enthusiasm, you know, Mr. Gunthy Ranker himself, the, the, the, you know, the master when it comes to these kinds of commercials, you know and so he was selling a program, Tony Robbins. He was the infomercial king. He owned the airways. Heck, he was on four or five times a night on different stations, you know, all over the place.

Dave Albin: And so he was selling a program and I was watching him and he said two things. It absolutely influenced me to buy his program. The one thing he said was, we'll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. And I was like, Whoa, okay, well, you know, I played with that because I did drugs and alcohol to try to find some pleasure and, and [00:27:00] avoid some pain so that made total sense to me.

Dave Albin: And then the other thing he said that got me. And by the way, I didn't like it. He was all motivated and Mr. Enthusiasm and I wasn't I, I thought he was. I didn't like the guy, but here's what he said that got me. He said, we'll do more to avoid pain and gain pleasure. Then the other thing he said was the driving force on our life, the way we make decisions, we do it out of inspiration or desperation.

Dave Albin: And I went, Whoa, okay. I'm pretty desperate and broke out my American expressive card. And I called the number and I ordered his program. He sent it to me. Right. Comes in a big box. It's a 30 day program, right? So you go through it for four weeks and it came on little white things called cassette tapes.

Dave Albin: That dates it, man. And I went through it and I did what the man told me to do and it worked. And that's all happening in 88, 89, in 1995, a buddy of mine who was into Tony Robbins called me on the phone and said, Hey, Tony's coming [00:28:00] to town live. Come on, man. Go with me, please go with me. I want to see this guy.

Dave Albin: Fine. I'll go with you. Great. He made the arrangements. This is a 95 and so he called me back and said, okay, we're done. We're there. We picked our tickets up at will call everything's taken care of. Here's what they told us to do. Bring snacks. You're going to spend a lot of time in the room. I can tell you that's an understatement.

Dave Albin: Anybody who's been to a Tony Robbins seminar that might be listening to this is laughing, right? Drink a lot of water, stay hydrated, bring a good attitude and be ready to play full out. And I said, Dan, how much was the ticket? He said, 695 bucks. Okay. Don't worry. I'll play full out. Right? I mean, what's, what's that today?

Dave Albin: This is 95. That's 700 bucks. What's that equate to today? Like 7, 7. 2 million. I mean, I don't know. It's a lot of money by Bitcoin with it. That's what I could tell you. And [00:29:00] so as he's getting ready to get off the phone, he goes, Oh wait, hold on. I'm almost left out the best part. I'm like, what? He goes, dude, we're going to be doing a fire walk.

Dave Albin: I'm here thinking, oh, hell no. You are out of your mind. What A fire walk. And you know what's interesting about that? I didn't even know what a, I didn't even know what that meant. I don't know what that is. I have no references for that. Don't know what a fire walk is. I've never heard the term. But fire and walk going together didn't sound like anything that I would be doing.

Dave Albin: And, you know, and up until that time in my life, I'm just getting sober. I'm sober a couple of years, fear had made all my decisions for me. Or most of them, 90 percent of them, right? So it lied to me and it shut me down and it kept all kinds of things from coming into my life. And that's what fear does.

Dave Albin: Cause fear is a liar and the fears you don't overcome become your limits. That's just the bottom line. And that's, so that's where I'm sitting in that moment. [00:30:00] And so we go to the, you know, here comes the big day. We go to the event. Tony took the stage at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I know many of your listeners may not know who Tony Robbins is.

Dave Albin: Go Google the guy, Tony Robbins, and you'll see. a little bit. He's pretty well known in the personal development industry. He's probably number one in the personal development industry. And so Tony takes the stage at two, right? Next thing we know it's after midnight. I've been in a room with Tony Robbins for 10 hours.

Dave Albin: This is a four day event called UPW, at least the power within the firewalk experience. Well, I've already made a decision. I'm not doing the firewalk. You know, when my buddy called me and said, Hey, we're doing a firewalk. I went, no, ain't doing it. I didn't tell Dan that I kept it up here because I didn't want to tell my buddy that I'm a coward, right?

Dave Albin: But I'm not going to do this firewalk, but I just remember thinking, I, you know, I'll go see Tony, but you don't have to do it. Well, it's midnight. I've been in the room for 10 hours. And all of a sudden Tony goes, take your shoes off. [00:31:00] And I'm like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I see where you're going with that pal.

Dave Albin: You're not going to trick me. Right? Well, I'm in a room with 3, 500 people. And guess what? They're all doing. They're taking their shoes off. And I'm like, no, you idiots don't fall for it. You know, don't go towards the light, you know, but it's so pretty kind of a thing, right? And I'm like, you got to be kidding me.

Dave Albin: Well, it gets worse as Tony's once he's got your shoes off, he's going to take you outside into this big parking lot where you're going to do this firewalk, right? Well, he gets everybody to start chanting and clapping their hands. So now you got 3, 500 people walking out there going, yes, yes, yes. And I'm walking out there going, no, ain't going to happen.

Dave Albin: It gets worse. When you get out there, he's got African drummers. So it's done, done, done, done, done, done, done. And I'm like, what [00:32:00] a dog and pony show this is. Right? So how do you firewalk 3, 500 people logistically? Well, what you do is you build a giant fire and you let it burn for about 10 hours and you just throw cords of wood on it and it burns all day and it renders.

Dave Albin: So at the end of the night. You've got a big giant pile of coals, which is probably that pits 35 feet wide, 70 feet long. And it's a big, giant pile of coals. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. So what do you do? You run, you put, you take wheelbarrows over to that pit, you load them full of coals, you bring them back and you.

Dave Albin: Lay two lanes of sod on each side of it. Sod meaning grass that you walk on and it's three feet wide, 15, 18 feet long. And then they just take a shovel from that coals in that wheelbarrow and sprinkle them on top and that's where you walk. That's the firewall. Well, I'm not having any of it. Where am I?

Dave Albin: I'm hiding in the back. I'm not, I went right to the back. I'm, [00:33:00] you know, when they did going all this, I'm just like, look, I'll just go hide in the back. Nobody's going to know nobody's, you know, who's going to know other than me. Right. Well, here's the interesting part. Tony knows this is literally one of the most life changing experiences any human will go through on this planet.

Dave Albin: By far, and I can back that up with having walked close to a half a million people in my career. So he doesn't want you to miss out. So he knows there's people like me. There's lots of us. We're all hiding out in the back. It's the only place to go, right? So what's he do? He trains people to come find you.

Dave Albin: And so guess what? Next thing I know I'm hiding in the back and here comes this guy out of nowhere and he makes eye contact with me. And apparently Robbins teaches them. Once you make eye contact, don't take your eyes off because here he comes. He's coming right at me and he probably gets 20 feet from me, 15 feet from me.

Dave Albin: And he goes, and he's looking at me really funny. Like there's something wrong with me. Right? He goes, are you okay? And I'm like yeah, of course, when we're not okay, [00:34:00] what do we say? We lie, right? Oh, I'm fine. I'm good. No, no worries here, mate, you know, off with you. Well, he looks at me after I said that and he said, so are you going to walk tonight?

Dave Albin: And I said, absolutely not. And he said, Hey man, it's cool. He said, no problem. We don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. But here's what's really interesting, man. Here's a stranger. I don't know who this guy is to this day. I wish I did because this one stranger has not only changed my life, my family's life, but hundreds of thousands of people in my world because of one guy and one question.

Dave Albin: And the question was, would you at least like to watch? And I'm thinking, well, okay, sure. I'll watch. Yeah. Why not? Let's, it should be fun. Let's watch these people burn their feet off. He goes, look man, you can't see anything from where you are. You're, you know, I'm a hundred yards away. I can see it, or I'm, excuse me, I can hear it.

Dave Albin: It's going crazy. [00:35:00] People are chanting and clapping and the drums are going, and people are already firewalking and they're in the celebration end and they're jumping up and down and they're screaming and they're celebrating. I mean, it's insane. It's, it's unlike anything I've ever experienced in my entire life other than a Tony Robbins seminar.

Dave Albin: And so I, I said, fine. I got in line. And again, I can hear it, but I can't see it. I've got 1000 people standing for me. I can't see anything except a wall of people. And so I'm kind of walking along and I'm walking along. All of a sudden, this guy comes up to me and he said, he knows when you're ready, when he says, go, you go.

Dave Albin: And this guy just disappeared into the night. And I'm like, what was that? Who was that? What was that for? And so now I'm walking along and I'm walking along and all of a sudden I get to a point I can't see in front of me, but I can see at an angle down, down the side from me and they're doing it. These people are walking on fire [00:36:00] and my brain is like, why, what, what, what would you do this for?

Dave Albin: You know, metaphorically what's happening here? And I'm in mesmerized. I can't take my eyes off them. They're every race, every creed, every color. They are walking on fire. There's no like, oh, the fire, this, no, everybody's walking. It's in that line. And, and all of a sudden I'm watching. And the next thing I know, guess where I am.

Dave Albin: I'm at the front of the line and I'm looking down. And to van and I'm I'm looking at it. There's that grass. It's three feet wide, 18 feet long. The coals are bright red. My heart is pounding out of my chest. I'm scared to death. The wheelbarrow is there. You can feel the heat coming off. I mean, it gets real.

Dave Albin: It's real fast. Why did there's a trainer stand? 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Why did you get mine? You because you were 

Dave Albin: watching what because he said, wouldn't you wouldn't you at least like to watch right? So you were watching 

De'Vannon Seráphino: from the side, but that didn't 

Dave Albin: know I was I [00:37:00] actually I actually kind of I got into he said, just follow the group up to the front and eventually you'll be able to see it.

Dave Albin: Well, what really happened is I got in line. And so I just moved along with everybody else is what was able to see the people from the side. Now I'm just I'm engulfed. And then boom, because I was, I was watching and I wasn't really looking in front of me and then boom, there I am. I'm at the front of the line.

Dave Albin: And so it came on, you're like, you know, out of nowhere. Now, remember that guy came up to me and he said, Hey, he knows when you're ready. When he says go, you go, well, they do that on purpose to get you ready. Because so now when I'm standing there, you know, with my heart getting ready to beat out of my chest, scared to death, there's a trainer standing there and their trainer goes eyes up.

Dave Albin: And so I pulled my eyes up. Well, when I was in the room with Tony for 10 hours. He teaches you look at the, don't stare at what you fear. Look to the end, look to the celebration. And that's where all the reward [00:38:00] is. That's where the life changing part of this happens is in the beginning and at the, at the celebration.

Dave Albin: And so, you know, now my eyes are up and, and the, and the trainer said, squeeze your fist and say yes. And I went, yes. And he went stronger and I went, yes. Well, he could tell I was leaving a lot on the table. I was about 50%. And he could tell he knew was not in a peak state. So he screamed at me like right here in my face.

Dave Albin: And I threw my hands in the air and screamed as loud as I could. And the trainer goes, go, go, go. Well, right. And I took off. Well, remember the guy he knows when you're ready, when he says, go, you go. I went, and so, you know, here's the first thing I learned about firewalking. When you take the first step, oh, you'll take the second, third, fourth, and fifth.

Dave Albin: I guarantee you. So what Tony does is he places two people at the end of that fire lane and the celebration in and they lock arms and they catch you and they're like, stop, wipe your [00:39:00] feet and celebrate. And I'm wiping my feet and I'm kind of celebrating and people are screaming around me. And it's, I mean, it's, it's pretty intense.

Dave Albin: It's awesome to be in it, but it's intense. It also night dawns on me. I burnt myself really bad. And I look at my foot. I look at it and it's dirty. But there's no burns. Oh, it's my other foot. No, same thing. It's dirty, but there's no burns. And so I'm standing there in the celebration and I just walked on coals that are 1000 agreed.

Dave Albin: I did not burn myself. And I don't have a clue how I did it. I don't know. How do you do? I don't know. I just did it. You ever, you know what I mean? You ever done something really cool and, and, and, but you don't really know how you did it, but you take credit for it, like, that's right. That's this guy. That's what I did.

Dave Albin: Well, that's the moment I was in. And again, now I'm in a, now I'm down in a celebration and with [00:40:00] 3, 500 people who are celebrating like crazy. And at that moment of your life, here's what I can share with you. You think you can accomplish anything. It's like, where's the bus? Let's go to Everest. You know, let's go climb.

Dave Albin: You know what I mean? What's the next thing? But here's where it gets even more interesting. That was, this is a four day event. That was day one. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second. I want to pause for a moment. That's a very good that you got to this point. I want to stop since we just since you just told about your first fire walking experience and talk about some of the things that people have spoken against it because I want to get your opinion on that.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So, because there's there's like some myths that circulate and I don't really have an opinion about it one way or the other. Like I've heard people say, like, it's it is because you move so fast across the coals, or maybe they're not. Peter, what would you say to people who disbelieve [00:41:00] that, that they're, that they're actually as hot as people claim or, you know, some people think it's not real.

De'Vannon Seráphino: What would you say to that? 

Dave Albin: Well, then come do it. And then the. Let's have a conversation. Don't talk to me from a place of not knowing because you, you're not congruent. You know, again, I'm on the other side, right? I've, I've firewalked a half a million people. You know, my team has firewalked everybody from Usher to Oprah and, and a whole bunch of people in between.

Dave Albin: You want to, I'll tell you what, here's what you do. You have that doubt, fine. Go Google Oprah's firewalk and then come back and let's have a conversation. And again, so from their, their perspective, it's really not even fair. I won't even get into a conversation with somebody like that. Cause I get asked that all the time.

Dave Albin: How can you walk on coals under a thousand degrees? And you know what my answer is? I don't know. I don't have a clue. I don't know the scientific, every single, I don't, I just know that you can do it. And I, and that's what happened to me. [00:42:00] I didn't know how I did it, but I did it. I didn't burn myself. The coals were real.

Dave Albin: I can tell you that. Oh, you could feel the heat. It's not like you can. But here's where it got interesting was the next day. This is what this is the life changing moment for me. Here's my aha moment. What's the next day? Well, this is day two. So we're in the four year, we're getting ready to go into the venue.

Dave Albin: 3, 500 people firewalked the night before, and I'd never seen anybody getting along like this humanistically. People were, I mean, first of all, I think pretty much everybody was on time. No one was late, right? Cause you have this whole different attitude. You're you're, you got leveled. Up last night, right?

Dave Albin: So your self awareness, your self belief and your self confidence went through the, went through the roof. But now you're in a group with them again. And so people are hugging, they're laughing, they're crying. I mean, they're getting along humanistically, unlike anything I've ever experienced, other than again, a Tony Robbins seminar.

Dave Albin: And that's [00:43:00] what got me. I was like, so did we drink the Kool Aid last night? Is that what happened? So that firewalk got all of us to this point and leveled us up our frequency. You better believe it did. Now, if you go research firewalking, it's been around a thousand years. I'm just a guy that's out doing it here at the corporate level.

Dave Albin: But if you studied the Phoenicians, the Polynesians, the Hawaiians, the people of India, India, the native American Indians, the Indo Europeans, it's been around for thousands of years, not thousands, but a thousand years. And guess what it is. It's a rite of passage. That's what they use it for. Not a motivational.

Dave Albin: they use it for right of deep culture into the fir you know, we've lost that don't, we don't write a p

Dave Albin: Let me give you an example. My daughter was six years old. The first time she firewalked, my son was nine [00:44:00] and I can tell you it influenced them like you wouldn't believe, but it's going to you know, one of the things that I do, I 

De'Vannon Seráphino: can, I can, I can see on a mental and a subconscious level, how doing something like that can inspire courage.

De'Vannon Seráphino: In people because everything that we do, you know, affects us in some, you know, yeah. In some way, whether we realize it or not. A hundred percent. And so, with all the things in this world, reaching out for people's attention in order to drag them down and, you know, and distract them and things like that, as people are have a tendency to run from themselves you know, with a lot of the problems that people have, you know, if you've seen people healed, able to get encouragement from.

De'Vannon Seráphino: This simple thing here, you know, great things can come from the littlest of things, you know, like walking across fire. I'm not saying it's simplistic [00:45:00] because it's a big deal to walk on fire, but it's not like it's as huge as going to school for 4 years to get a degree or anything like that. You know, it's you're using an element of nature.

De'Vannon Seráphino: To, to make somebody feel like in, you know, they've achieved something great. And then they basically alchemize that into other areas of their lives. And really it's according to your belief. So, you know what, if some people have tried all these other stuff and they can't find encouragement, what the fuck would this hurt?

Dave Albin: Well, okay. So you nailed it because up until my black, so how am I living my life up until this point, right? I'm adopted and, you know, I learned all this stuff and I. Get it, you know, alcoholism and you know, my life and all that. But now all of a sudden I'm standing in a place where up until that firewalk, everything was like you said, fuck everything and run fear F E A R forget everything and run.

Dave Albin: Right. But at that [00:46:00] moment after the firewalk, the fear, the acronym changed because now it became face everything and rise. And I was being told in a a False images appearing real. So remember what's happening here, you know, the person, the AA and the step 12 steps and all that, and the personal development industry had kind of collided in my life at the same time.

Dave Albin: And that wasn't really happening to other people. I mean, there's a few, so it just had a profound effect on me. It's just, I put so many things together in those moments that it was like, and here's what I believe. I believe that the two most important times in someone's life is the moment you're born and the moment you figure out why.

Dave Albin: And there's a backstory on that one too, because if you look ancestrally, what it took to happen for you to be you and I right now, Savannah to be on your podcast. A lot of things had to go just right. Had to go perfectly as a matter of fact, right? Because my ancestors, [00:47:00] your ancestors, everything they had to go through to get you here, and most of them suffered immensely.

Dave Albin: I mean, if you go back just 12 generations, that's 400 years, 400 plus years. That's about 4, 094 people. And everything had happened just perfectly. And I love your background because from the universal standpoint, everything had to go perfectly. Or you and I are not sitting here right now talking about it.

Dave Albin: It's not the way it works. So the chances of being born is like one in 400 trillion anyway. So, and I think it's higher than that, but cause that's, you have to go look at mathematically and scientifically. There's only two people on earth that can make you. Right? Your mom drops a couple of hundred eggs in her lifetime.

Dave Albin: There's only one that could create you and created me. You know, dad's contribution of all the swimmers, right? There's only one in 60 to 100 million in that group, right? So dad's contribution. So if you think you're here by [00:48:00] some accident, bullshit, stop lying to yourself. You know, I do something. You'll love this.

Dave Albin: So when I talk to my groups, when I get hired by corporate America to come in and create this paradigm shift experience. I put, I start my talk and I have a picture of a guy on the screen on the stage, right? And it's a picture of a guy by the name of Eric Weinmeier. And it's clearly by the picture, he's standing at the top of Mount Everest, right?

Dave Albin: So I, I don't say anything about him. I just leave him up there and then I'll come back 20, 25 minutes later. I'll say, Hey, bye. By the way, who can tell me who's, who's, where this guy standing behind me? It's pretty obvious that somebody always raises, I trick them. They raise their hand and they go Mount Everest.

Dave Albin: And I go, that's correct. And let me tell you something else about Eric. He's climbed the seven highest mountains on seven continents on this planet. Let me say that again. He's climbed to seven mountains on seven highest mountains on seven continents on this planet. Put that boy on a mountain bike. He could tear it up, put him [00:49:00] in a kayak.

Dave Albin: You can probably do just most any river on earth, but here's something you need to know about Eric. He's blind. So I did this purposely. I'm doing this for you, not to you, but for you, if a man can climb the seven highest mountains on earth and he's blind, what bullshit have you told yourself about what you can't do?

Dave Albin: And I'll get, I'll guarantee you that if you've told yourself you can't do it, something you wanted to do 99. 9999 percent of the time, that's bullshit. Right? So my, my, my encouragement is don't lie to yourself and don't negotiate with yourself, step into your. Greatness and own it and do great things. And that's kind of where I was.

Dave Albin: That's what happened because I went from attending a Tony Robbins seminar. In fact, I met one of Tony's trainers and he said, I was talking to him. I'm like, man, you get to [00:50:00] be in this environment all the time. He goes, yeah, all the time. And he goes, matter of fact, he goes, you see all those people over there with the black shirts and the pink writing.

Dave Albin: Yeah. He goes, they're volunteers, man. They're just, they're people just like you. They came to a firewalk and then they wanted to come back and be part of it and help and they volunteer. So when you get home, go call Robbins research. Tell me like a crew volunteer crew application. I did. That reminds 

De'Vannon Seráphino: me of The blind guy climbing the mountains reminds me of this Twitch streamer who I'm, who I'm, who I'm fond of, and he's Like, his hands, like, don't exactly, like, work, and so he has, like, this special setup so that he can still play video games and be a, and be a Twitch streamer.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And and I, and I really, really, really, really respect him because he did not let his handicaps stop him just because he cannot pick up you know, a gaming controller, like everyone else, he was like, [00:51:00] fuck that. I'm going to find a different way to make it work. And and you know, and I look at him all the time on Twitch and I'm just like in awe of how a life like his testifies against people.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Okay. Who have perfectly working and able bodies. Yeah. They're mental to fall and stop them from doing things, you know, Physically handicapped hands don't work. And he's playing the fuck out of these video games 

Dave Albin: and whipping people's ass while he's doing it. Right, 

De'Vannon Seráphino: right. Totally doing that. Totally. We wouldn't even need the creator and, you know, he is overcoming his mind.

De'Vannon Seráphino: You know, it's all about the mind and this firewalking sounds like it's something that has the power to rewire. You know, somebody fine. So what I want to know is I want to know. Has anybody ever been seriously injured? No, that you know of? No, that's a hard no. 

Dave Albin: That's a hard no. And then here's the thing.

Dave Albin: The perception [00:52:00] is it does seem like you could. You, you, you want to know what's dangerous. Go put your kids in soccer. That's dangerous. Okay, firewalking is like, so you'll love this. So a couple of few years ago, I got a call from this executive assistant of this CEO of this big company. And she said, Hey, Gabe, my name is so so.

Dave Albin: And my boss wanted me to call you. And we want to talk to you about a firewalk, but my boss wants to meet you in person. And I go, okay, well, here's my per diem per day, fly me out there. I fly business class and, and I stay at these hotels. And she said, done. So they flew me to Arizona. And and I got out there.

Dave Albin: And she met me at the airport, took me to my room, got it all done, picked me up in the morning and brought me to breakfast at like 1045, I think it was. And then I think the meeting started at, I don't know, 1130. And we go in, in this beautiful corporate building. It overlooks the desert. You go up to the fourth floor.

Dave Albin: They got a beautiful [00:53:00] boardroom that looks out into the desert. It's gorgeous. And I sit down, got my name tag there. All the people coming in. There's, I don't know, there's a dozen people that come in, CEO comes in. Goes to the head of the, you know, of the table and starts the meeting. And he says, Hey, everybody, thanks for coming.

Dave Albin: As you know, we brought Dave Albin in from Firewalk Productions. We want to talk to him about a Firewalk for our sales and marketing meeting coming up in such and such a date. So who here has got any questions? And the corporate attorney, which is setting like three seats for me, says, I got a question, right?

Dave Albin: This is their corporate attorney. He said, how many of our people are going to get burnt? And the way he said it was classical, right? Just a typical, and he's an old guy and he's an old attorney, right? And I said, well, you know, sir, that's a fair question. Absolutely. I'd want to ask it myself. And so let me to properly answer it so I can put it in perspective.

Dave Albin: So there's no doubt. [00:54:00] You know, I'm not leaving anything out. I, I need to ask you a question. How many of you in this room have ever taken your, your family or yourself to a beach, to a lake or to a river or to a pool and got yourself sunburned? And they all said, yeah, we've all done that. How many of you took your family back and did it a second time?

Dave Albin: They're like, yeah, we pretty much all done that. I go, lemme tell you something that's a hundred times, maybe a thousand times more dangerous than any firewalk you're ever gonna do with me. And as soon as those words came out of my mouth, the CEO spoke up and he said, he goes, Oh man, Mr. Albin, you know, we've really made a big, big mistake bringing you here.

Dave Albin: And I thought. Oh, he didn't like my answer. And he says, he turns to a CFO who's sitting on his right. Who, you know, writes all the checks, right. Improves everything. The chief financial officer, he said, he turns to him and he said, look, [00:55:00] if this guy's good enough for Google and he's good enough for Tony Robbins, he's good enough for us booking, let's go

Dave Albin: to lunch. but legally people are gonna, they're gonna ask that. How many people are going to get hurt? How many people are going to get burnt? How many people are going to get hospitalized? None, zero. Can you get a burn? Absolutely. Welcome to life. The burn's gone in a day or two in 24 hours, 48 hours, the burn's gone.

Dave Albin: It's a little, it's a little tiny blister on your foot, but the badge of honor that you get a, you get to wear with all the other fire walkers that have been around for a thousand years and that ancestral side of that, you know, you're walking to a beat of a different drum all of a sudden. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: You know what I like about that?

De'Vannon Seráphino: I love, I love the fact that you said that you might get a little blister or something, cause that sounds very like realistic. Sure. But what I love about the way that, 

Dave Albin: by the way, let me say something else. If you don't do it the way I [00:56:00] teach you, you can get burnt. Like, let's say you go stomping your feet through that fire and you jam a coal in between your toes.

Dave Albin: Did I tell you to stop your feet? No, I said, walk normal. Listen to my instructions. And when you get to the end, very clear, loud and clear, stop, wipe your feet and then celebrate. Don't celebrate. And forget to wipe your feet and stomp your feet. Cause again, you know, you've got that little place in between your toes.

Dave Albin: And if you jammed your foot down and a coal goes in between it, that's not going to feel good. You're going to have a blister is probably going to last a week. So why where's the lesson? Oh, I didn't do it the way the instructor told me. Try that. If you're a Navy SEAL, you better listen to your instructor.

Dave Albin: You don't become a Navy SEAL by sitting in a classroom. [00:57:00] Now I know that's part of it. Don't get me wrong. But where you become a seal is in the water. They break you at three o'clock in the morning and they take you off the coast of San Antonio and throw you in. And then they start to tell you about all the different species of sharks that are in the water that will eat you.

Dave Albin: Not one seal's ever been eaten. Well, at least not a Navy seal. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: What I, what, what, what stands out to me, I'm glad the seals were not eaten. The Navy seals were not eaten. Is, is the way that, like, like you and Tony, you know, seem to, to think I like it because it it's, it's counterintuitive to how most people think, okay?

De'Vannon Seráphino: It's like people who have been awakened or pulled out of the matrix, because what you were pointing out to them is that the way those people were thinking does [00:58:00] not, it doesn't balance out across all areas of their life. So then they'll take hella risk over here and be fine with that. And then when it comes to this.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Act like it's too much, like it doesn't, like it doesn't balance out and people live this way all the time, you know, my, you know, I think about how when, when COVID was like a big deal and everything like that. And I've, and I've known of people say that they were like, like out having sex and supposedly like wearing condoms.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Okay. And I was like, what's the point of putting a condom on to protect you from a disease? Now, some, some STDs, they can't fix. Some things you can get through sex still to this day and there's no fix for it. But generally speaking, the things that people who were willing to do that were trying to protect themselves from were things that you could probably take a pill for, but the COVID could kill you in like two weeks from being airborne.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So a condom can't protect you from that. So I was like, You're doing all of this, [00:59:00] like those people going to get sunburned every weekend, but then they don't want to go hop across fire for a few minutes that it takes to get across there, you know, so much risk over here, but it's like, it doesn't balance out like the way some people think it's what I love about y'all's organization is that it's it's pulling that logic in.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And it's making sure that all the boxes square and everything checks out, you know, from this aspect of life, that aspect of life, like it has to make sense.

Dave Albin: Right. Well, it comes down to like, you know, if you had less fear, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? What would you do? How would it be that if you lived your life as though your prayers are being answered?

Dave Albin: How about you lived your life that things were happening for you and not to you? How about saying I get to do this rather than I have to do this? Right. So it all comes down to your mindset. What are you telling yourself? [01:00:00] And that's part, that's part of what I'm doing. I'm bringing attention to that part of it.

Dave Albin: Again, the fears we don't overcome become our limits because what doesn't challenge us doesn't change you. Period. And the story, you're not going to become, you know, you're not going to live an extraordinary life by living on the couch because everything you've ever wanted to sit right over there, just on the other side of fear.

Dave Albin: That's where it is. And so the firewall gives you an opportunity to break through all that. You know, the other thing that I do, I take it to another level. And what I mean by that is we do the board break and the fire walk together. Then that really blows it out of the water. It is by far, there's nothing like what I create on earth.

Dave Albin: Because what we do with the fire with the board break, it's just a simple a martial arts thing. Any martial arts person knows what I'm talking about with a board break. Because when you go from one belt to another belt, you have to break a board, right? You break it with your hand, you break it with your knuckles, you [01:01:00] break it with your elbow, you break it with your knee, you break it with your foot, whatever.

Dave Albin: And you graduate in belts. Well, so what we do is we take that board break, and I have them write something on front of the board that they want to move towards. I haven't write something on back of the board. They need to move away from and then I haven't write anybody's name on the board that they're in conflict with.

Dave Albin: This is huge. In other words, if forgiveness or reconciliation is part of that relationship, it ends tonight. Stop. Stop carrying that around with you. It ends tonight. And then to create the right of passes the ancestral side of the firewall. I haven't write anybody's name on the board that they've lost.

Dave Albin: And then we take them outside. We show them how to do it. You know, it's basically it's a monkey pop. Boom. You break it. We set up the bricks. They drive down through them or we hold them depending on the circumstances. They break the board. We bring them around. The fire's going. You know, I've already had them ready to go to do it in the room.

Dave Albin: They come outside. They do their [01:02:00] fire walk. They come back around. They throw their boards into the fire. And then I do a breathing exercise. It's proprietary and after the firewalk and then I get everybody to hug and breathe together and then I get it that what happens there is we get everybody's heart to calibrate.

Dave Albin: Everybody's heart starts beating at the same time. And so when you do that, you take a human being that's been pulled apart because of mask wearing and vaccines and their political beliefs and all the bullshit. And instead of being ripped apart, they go. And it puts them right back in a humanistic format, which is where if you're going to be a CEO, you have a company of people, do you, or do you not want them all to be working together as a unit so that her production is high, because if they're fighting or they're dissension, your production's going to go down every, every CEO, man, and woman knows that.

Dave Albin: And if the CEO doesn't fix it, it's on them. Cause basically when people hire [01:03:00]me.

Dave Albin: It's one of three reasons. One, there's been a total breakdown of the company. Things are not good. And they're hoping that I can come in and put them back together and get them back to working as a unit. Number two, things are pretty good. Things aren't really good. They're not, you know, they're not perfect, but they're not bad either.

Dave Albin: So they're somewhere in the middle, almost mediocrity. So they bring me in to go, or one of my favorite is like, I just, I just got back from MIT about a week ago and we did a group 65 people there. All of them were COOs. They were all, all chief either financial offers or chief operating officers inside corporations, which meant they're the second in command.

Dave Albin: They're not the, they're not the CEO. They're the second in command. We had 63 of them. I think, Oh, we had a good time. And, and the bottom line was. There's a lot of companies that are doing really, really well, they're kicking butt, [01:04:00] but they want to kick it up that little extra amount to go from like, you know, 10 percent above 5%, if you will.

Dave Albin: When it, when it comes to all that, so I just need to know what's going on when they hire me. Right. Are they launching a new product? I mean, whatever it is, the firewalk and the board break together in addition to, you know, the finalization of the breath work at the end is beyond extraordinary. What results 

De'Vannon Seráphino: have you seen?

De'Vannon Seráphino: I want you to tell me like, like financially, numerically, like the before and after from some of the companies that you've worked for. And also, do you work with individual people as well? Or is it just the companies? 

Dave Albin: I know I've had several private individuals, celebrities, professional athletes get ahold of me and I invite them.

Dave Albin: They can come up to my cabin. I live up in the Appalachian mountains. I'm in the Northwestern part of the state of North Carolina. So if you've ever heard of Boone, North Carolina, which is in the Appalachian mountains, which is where App [01:05:00] State University is, I'm 25 minutes West of there in the mountain.

Dave Albin: So my cabin sits at 3, 500 feet. So I have an Airbnb so the private client can come and do this privately if they want to do it privately. I have the academy. I have the academy, right? It's coming up next week. So we're sold out. It's sold out for weeks where people come and then I teach them everything that I do, that I've done for three decades.

Dave Albin: So they come to the academy to learn all this, the board break, the firewalk, the glass walk, the arrow break, the rebar bend, you know, all the business structure, licensing. Permits not hold harmless agreements, insurance, all of it. I teach them all that. And then corporations come in and they say, Hey, we want to do this event in Boca Raton, you know, or wherever.

Dave Albin: And then they come in and just hire us and write us a check. So to get back though, to, you know, I don't, the companies typically don't get back to me and say, Hey, Dave. We had an 18 percent increase. Well, that's not true. Well, I found out more [01:06:00] accidentally than anything else. I had one, one client who hired me and within three months, their sales went up 16%.

Dave Albin: Now, was that because we did the firewalk? I don't know. I don't know. I just know that that's what happened. So they were doing several things to take their company, you know, for growth, but that's a lot of growth. 16 percent in sales is quite a bit. And that happened within a short time after, you know, we did the firewalk.

Dave Albin: So could it, did it influence it? My answer is yes. How much? I don't know. I can't speak to that. You know, but I've seen. I've seen a whole lot of people come to events and go home and create extraordinary things, not only in business, but in life. All of it. So are there, 

De'Vannon Seráphino: are there events like throughout this?

De'Vannon Seráphino: So if just an individual person wants to come just to experience it, not necessarily to learn how to do it, right. Is that 

Dave Albin: available? They'd have to call me direct. Yeah. They'd have to get ahold of me through my website and call [01:07:00] me and say, Hey, Dave, I'd like to do a, you know, a private event with you. Okay.

Dave Albin: So 

De'Vannon Seráphino: it's just like a group of friends or a group of people or something like that. 

Dave Albin: We could, we could, yeah, we could do that. You know, if you get you an Airbnb and. You know, then you come over to my house for the firelock. We do it out here in my driveway. It kind of, of course, my driveway is out in the middle of a mountains.

Dave Albin: I mean, you could look up the mountain here and see a bear, you know, for my driveway, right. Kind of a thing. And I'd say that because I've lived here, what, eight years. I've seen one bear off my deck on the side of my house. But my point is yes. It could be done if you had a group of friends and you all wanted to do it.

Dave Albin: Yes, we could figure out a way to do it. And I, and I typically have them come here. I don't go there. Well, if you want me to go there, I'm going to charge you through the nose. I don't want to do it. But if you, if you throw enough pictures of dead presidents at me, I'll probably say yes. Right. Because that money is going to my grandkids.

Dave Albin: So, you know, that's the leverage there. Right. But typically I make you come here because it's an [01:08:00] extraordinary place. I live in the Appalachian Mountains. I have mountain spring water coming into my home. That's what you drink. That's what you bathe in. The oxygen, the air quality where I live is spectacular.

Dave Albin: And it's very majestic. This is the, you know, the splendor here in these mountains is extraordinary. So it's cool to have you here that way, whether it's grounding and, and cold water and things like this for showers. So, you know, depending on what's going on with you, I can rock your world. I'll change your life, but you better be ready when you get here to do what I suggest you to do.

Dave Albin: Cause I, you know, yeah, the firewalks part of it. Yeah. The board breaks part of it. The glass walk is part of it. If you come privately, that's right. I teach you how to walk on broken glass. The arrow break, put the arrow here in your neck, put it up against the wall, step through and break it cold water showers in your morning.

Dave Albin: You know, [01:09:00] so I'm going to, I'm going to activate that muscle that creates the habits. That will show you how to change your life. You're going to create new rituals. You're going to create new habits. You're going to, you know, you're going to stop negotiating with yourself. And that those are, those are, you know, they're not that big.

Dave Albin: Nope. It's not that much pain. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: It's probably less pain than whatever it is. They're 

Dave Albin: going through. Exactly. Pick your pain, the pain of not accomplishing what you want in life and playing small, that's painful. Cause you're going to get to the end and go, fuck. Why didn't I listen to myself? You know, that's the regret is going to be excruciating.

Dave Albin: Don't do it's not that hard. On the other side to get what you want in life is, is a lot less than the fucking pain at the end if you played small, absolutely. Just go ask anybody that's on their deathbed, they're going to tell you, you know, I wish I'd have done this [01:10:00] and I wish I'd have done that. And I didn't do it.

Dave Albin: You know what I mean? If they go regret after regret, after regret, and anybody listening to this already knows what they are. They're already stacking them because that's what we do. We stack them. So stop stacking and unstack them. And making it, you know, maybe, maybe they come to the Academy next year and I show you how to change people's lives on like anything you could have ever imagined, you know what you got to do 

De'Vannon Seráphino: as they say, you got to play to win.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So. So I want to tell them, like, so y'all the website is firewalkadventures. com, that's firewalkadventures. com, it's going to go in the show notes, of course and, and Dave is also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, all those links are going to go in the show notes as well, and so I want you to Give us like your, your last words of encouragement or whatever you want to say, then I'm going to ask you some dad jokes to kind of close out the [01:11:00] the show I thank you for your wealth of wisdom and everything, and you're very sharp intellect on today.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So any like last words that you have? 

Dave Albin: Well, kudos to you. It's the host that do all the work. I just did good to come out, come on your show and talk shit, you know, and, and hopefully share some wisdom, some knowledge and some experience and some strength and some hope. And encourage somebody to go, you know what?

Dave Albin: You know, if that guy can do it and he was all messed up on drugs and alcohol, why can't I do it? Well, you can. Well, wow. You know, one of my favorite sayings is, you know, and I say this a lot and that is something my, one of my mentors left me and he said, you know, Dave, every human on this planet has two lives.

Dave Albin: And the second one starts. When you realize you have only one, and I'm going to go back to what I said earlier, the two most important times in your life is the moment you're born and the moment you figure out why, and you're here for a reason. Go get dialed in with it. Because again, the bottom, the bottom line is that you have no idea [01:12:00] who you're going to affect or what you're going to say or, you know, maybe you're going to ask somebody a question one day.

Dave Albin: Maybe you're a guy that's out there with Tony Robbins, and you turn around and go ask a bunch of people, well, wouldn't you at least like to walk? Well, okay, well, wouldn't you at least like to watch? There's a guy out there floating around, I'm guessing he's, I hope he's still alive, that asked me a question that changed my life, life so beyond belief, who, who put me in a position to go change a lot of lives, right?

Dave Albin: You just being on the show tonight is being influenced by that guy. Because he's the one who asked the question. And I believe if you ask quality questions, you'll get a quality answer. Hmm. What a concept because you're how your brain works. It's totally how it works. And then finally, one of the things I would say is, look, let's stop looking for heroes and be one

De'Vannon Seráphino: period, period, period. Amen to that. [01:13:00] So. That joke. Number one, I made sure that these were fire related 'cause I felt like it would fit into the, the theme. So what far away, what , I see what you did there. I love it. , what did the flame say to his buddies after he fell in? Love the 

Dave Albin: flame, say to his buddies After he fell in love, I finally found the, my spark 

De'Vannon Seráphino: so close, he said, I found the perfect match.

Dave Albin: I'll 

De'Vannon Seráphino: accept that though that I finally found my spot, it's close enough, you got one, I'll take it. So dad joke number two, and these are from scary mommy. com.

Dave Albin: Oh, scary. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Mommy's scary. Mommy. com. Oh boy. What do you call a jacket? What do you, what do you call a jacket? Like one that you wear that goes up in flames,[01:14:00]

Dave Albin: a far reach farting suit.

Dave Albin: What do you call you have to tell me, 

De'Vannon Seráphino: man, super simple, a blazer.

Dave Albin: Okay, fine. A blazer. That's funny. Cause I had a dog named blaze. Imagine I did. I had a whip it, you know, the little miniature greyhounds. Well, they, they, they run like a hundred miles an hour or whatever it is. It's crazy. Yeah. And so, you know, and be there in the firewall, a world we named him blaze. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: So then the last one is, what did the firefighter say when he saw the church burning down?

Dave Albin: Holy smokes. Right.

De'Vannon Seráphino: That [01:15:00] was the fucking loot he 

Dave Albin: did. Oh man. Oh, the pressure was intense. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Hey, two out of three ain't bad. 

Dave Albin: I'll take it. That's 66 and a third two thirds percent. 

De'Vannon Seráphino: Okay. Again, y'all, this has been the honorable Dave Alvin with Firewalk Adventures. The website is firewalkadventures. com. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube will go in the show notes.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Dave, thank you so much for your time and your intellect on this day. 

Dave Albin: Thanks, man. You rock.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Thank you all so much for taking time to listen to the sex, drugs, and Jesus podcast. It really means everything to me. Look, if you love the show, you can find more information and resources at sex, drugs, and Jesus. com, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Feel free to reach out to me directly at Devannon at sexdrugsandjesus.

De'Vannon Seráphino: com and on Twitter and Facebook as well. [01:16:00] My name is Devannon and it's been wonderful being your host today. And just remember that everything is going to be all right.

De'Vannon Seráphino: